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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22881376">Take my hand, let's blow this joint</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhirlyGirl/pseuds/WhirlyGirl'>WhirlyGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MTMTE/LL - Fandom, The Transformers (IDW Generation One)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Torture, Developing Friendships, Injury Recovery, M/M, Suicide, Torture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:53:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,649</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22881376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhirlyGirl/pseuds/WhirlyGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fort Max, after G9 and how he and Red Alert helped each other heal.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fortress Maximus/Red Alert, Fortress Maximus/Rung</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Take my hand, let's blow this joint</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is a dark fic; there's scenes from Last Stand of the Wrecker's' where Max is tortured right at the start.  This fic also deals with the build up to and suicide of a major character, so please heed the tags.  It's not without it's hopefully moments though!  You will prob need a working knowlegde of MTMTE and LL to understand some of this - there are areas I have directly lifted too - such as Max's speech to Rung in the brig and Overlord's bit at the beginning.  So really, I can't take credit for the story line here, that belongs to the masterful James Roberts.  I've given Red a pre war function that fits his character, though I don't think it's canon and there may be mistakes with timelines or canon elements, but I'm only human. Also - I've used ideas from other fics that I've read, such as mech frame and field language - I borrowed field language such as overlapping from Therrea (go read their stuff, it's amazing), as well as the tick/hiss of a systems check they use to cover awkward moments and frame lanaguage from a variety of sources, I think from Spoon888 (also amazing!)   The story explores the platonic relationship between Max and Red - I don't feel with how damaged they are that they'd ever be anything other than amica - and how they help each other heal.  And whilst I mostly bad mouth Roddy in this fic, he is the best boi and I love him really, it's just for this fic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Garrus 9? Why the frag they want me at G9?</em>
</p><p>
  <em> We need a warden Max.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> I ain’t no warden Prowl… </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Those are your orders.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> Uh Huh. That from Optimus or you? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don’t see how…</em>
</p><p>
  <em> Ok, so it’s you. You want to tell me why I’m really being deployed to that Primus forsaken place? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s G9 or the brig. I don’t need to explain my orders to you Max.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> Your orders.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> No, Max, your orders.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Max?</p><p>
  <em>Overlord pulled him up by the ruins of his cranial finial, took his throat, and held him aloft, fluids streaming from a dozen different wounds, limbs useless now or torn off. In the darkness of the pit beneath him, optics glittered, red and blue, hundreds of mechs, silent, broken, starving:</em>
</p><p>
  <em> Waiting. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Let us play a game. I will turn Fortress Maximus over to you.’ He held the ruins of Fortress Maximus out, ready to throw him into the pit below. ‘All you have to do is try not to kill him.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Overlord leaned in close, voice a whisper. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>‘Be a good mech and give me what I want or I’ll give you to your prisoners, and they will, very literally at this point, eat you alive.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Max’s vocaliser was in pieces, scattered across the podium, where Overlord had cranked open his jaw, reached down his throat and pulled it out. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Overlord smiled. ‘No? Ok.’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He hefted Max up.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> ‘Catch!’ </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The darkness below seethed, and, moving as one as he was thrown, swallowed him whole.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>‘Max?’</p><p>Some part of him recognised the high pitch whine of weapons charging and his HUD lit up with a proximity alert as someone leaned in. He flinched as Rung’s field overlapped with his but somehow, somehow, he manged not to floor the little psychiatrist.</p><p>The room was a furnace, mostly from where his own vents were roaring to expel the heat of his systems at full boar, plating flared to its furthest extreme, both to cool and to posture.</p><p>Rung’s office. Rung. Not a threat. Not Overlord.</p><p>The tiny orange mech had moved in close, not touching Max, but deliberately lathing his field against Max’s, strange bespectacled optics focused, watching, but not afraid. He didn’t speak again and just waited, silent, patient, as Max reoriented himself.</p><p>They hadn’t been talking about Overlord or G9. They hadn’t been talking about much of anything, Max tired, evasive, so Rung had been explaining about the video journal Rewind was putting together, the interviews with Rodimus, Tailgate, even Cyclonus. Max had sat and half listened, fidgeting with the cable housing on the hydraulics of his knee. He’d shifted as the conversation drifted along and the cable he’d worried slightly lose became trapped in the joint and pinched painfully. He’d flexed the joint to release it and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a memory purge of when he’d been sprawled on his back looking at the same joint as it sparked and leaked out, his lower limb discarded on the opposite side of the room, along with his hand, parts of his cranial casing and the majority of the plating covering his torso, pried loose or torn away.</p><p>He shuddered but terminated the thread to his weapons systems, forcibly taking them offline and once his internal temperature was no longer redlining, reprioritised the command tree to shut down his dorsal vents and lay flat his flared plating.</p><p>.’.m'sorry..’ He mumbled.</p><p>He sat, but then thought better of it.</p><p>‘I'll leave.’</p><p>Rung did touch him this time, a firm hand, tiny on his arm as he turned to go.</p><p>‘It’s ok Max. It’s best actually if we talk about what just happened, what it was that made you so upset.’</p><p>Max gently shrugged off the hand and remained standing.</p><p>‘Nothing. I just forgot where I was.’</p><p>‘And where did you think you were?’</p><p>In the silence of the office the whine of charging capacitors as weapons systems dropped online was loud. Max moved past Rung, careful not to jostle the smaller mech.</p><p>‘Max?’</p><p>He keyed open the door.</p><p>‘No. I’m done now.’</p><p>The door slid closed on Max’s retreating form and Rung was left wondering where in their conversation he’d slipped back into the horrors of G9. And if he’d ever truly come back from it.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The oil reserve was at the front of the ship, low down in her bowels, on the outer hull, potentially vulnerable, but strategically placed for purging into space if necessary. Six long, horizontal windows were punched high into the bulkhead that looked out onto the star field beyond. There was no reason for anyone to be down here; it was at the furthest point from Swerve’s and the majority of hab suits were located much higher and further back.</p><p>Max had discovered that the door was unsecured- another symptom of their captain’s lackadaisical style- several cycles ago, having taken to wandering the lower levels during his off shift, and had found it deserted and rarely, if ever, frequented by other crew members.</p><p>Rung had urged him, several times over the course of their sessions together, to spend more time with the other mechs on the ship, to socialise, to go to Swerve’s every now and then. To get used to the noise, the being jostled without every weapons system he had tripping online, to remember how to talk to a mech, about the trivial, the inconsequential. Max knew he wasn’t the only one who found it hard in social groups now; Whirl was a fragging nightmare. Max had seen Drift in the bar a few times, usually propping up their captain, or encouraging him down off the tables from where he was spouting impassioned nonsense, or singing. Drift, with his too bright blue eyes and his bright white fake smile. He didn’t smile so brightly at Max when they'd crossed paths, but Max hadn’t said a word, hadn’t spoken any one of the hundreds of barbed comments he could have, about when they'd last encountered each other and Drift had had gold optics and a purple brand and had escaped Simazi with only a handful of other Decepticon scum.</p><p>Skids had spoken to him. He liked Skids. He was sure everyone liked Skids, he was just one of those mechs, genuine, even though he had no idea who he was. Maybe that was why.</p><p>The last time Max had been to Swerves, he'd sat at the bar and been pointedly ignored until Trailbreaker had sat next to him, already off his head and had spoken at him for a bit. Max hadn’t known Trailbreaker during the war but had heard good things about him; another genuine guy, big, kind, but a bit of waste of space, and more than aware of his limitations as a soldier. The mech sat next to him had clearly been drowning in Energex since long before the war had ended. He’d crawled into a bottle and simple decided to stay there. Max envied him in a weird way. He knew Drift had been a gutter mech in his days before he became Deadlock, and under his shiny new Autobot exterior , was still the syphonist and recovering addict. Everyone had their ways of coping. Max coped in solitude, whatever Rung advised. It was better that way. Safer.</p><p>So.</p><p>Max avoided Swerve’s, even if it was supposedly good for him. He’d started to frequent the oil reserve, would sit alone in the starlight at the edge of the iridescent depths and think of all the ways he’d dismantle Prowl if they ever crossed paths again.</p><p>And one day, the blast doors rolled back, and anther mech was sat in his space at the edge of the pool. Max stopped dead in the door way and tamped down his desire to fire up everything in his arsenal. The mech at the edge of the pool wasn’t so successful and the whine of onlining ion weapons echoed across the cavernous room. They eyed each other, serenaded by the sounds of capacitors charging.</p><p>‘Fortress Maximus.’</p><p>The mech’s voice carried surely but what Max could discern of his field was a panicked mess.</p><p>‘Yup.’</p><p>His HUD identified the other guy as Red Alert. Huh. Explained the hysteria in his field.</p><p>‘This area is off limits.’</p><p>Max huffed. ‘Is that right. Door’s been unlocked for cycles. Seems like Rodimus ain’t too worried if we’re down here. And you’re here.’</p><p>Max watched as the nervy mech across from him flared the major plates across his protoform, posturing. Like most of the actual command team, he'd never met Red Alert, but knew of him. By the time Max had onlined, the red and white mech had been shunted from the frontline to a quiet storage room tucked away safely from prying eyes that might discern that the Autobot’s Head of Security was glitched to frag and a somewhat terrifying liability. Prowl had stepped in. Enough said.</p><p>Max stepped across the threshold, hoping that even as glitched as he was, Red Alert would honour Max's HUD tag as ‘friendly' and not do anything stupid. He watched as Red Alert bristled.</p><p>‘Look Red, I come down here on my off cycle, just to sit. It’s quiet. I like that. Don’t think Roddy cares either way.’</p><p>‘This area is off limits...’</p><p>Max stopped in front of the smaller mech, a respectable distance away, but still close enough to loom.</p><p>‘Wars over Red. I just want to sit and be quiet.’</p><p>Red Alert didn’t cow under Max's quiet intimidation; whilst none of the Autobots online still were as big as Max, Red Alert had dealt with a command team made up of frontline mechs, nearly all bigger than him. His plating rippled but remained flared.</p><p>‘My designation is Red Alert, not ‘Red.’</p><p>Max huffed a laugh and moved passed, deliberately brushing the other mech's field with his own, a solid swipe of reassurance. Red Alert startled a little as their fields overlapped and wound his in, armour clamping shut the intrusion.</p><p>‘You can call me Max.’</p><p>He lowered himself slowly to sit on them edge of the vast dark pool, a cacophony of hydraulics from joints and systems still newly integrated and factory fresh from his time spent on Delphi not so long ago, being rebuilt after Overlord had pulled him apart.</p><p>‘I’m going to sit here for a bit now Red. You do what you need to.’</p><p>Behind him he heard the tick and hiss of a systems check as Red Alert faltered. Max offlined his optics and began to shut down non essential processes, keeping a tab on the mech still standing behind him with passive sonar from the transmitters in the tall finials framing his helm.</p><p>Red Alert stood in the deepening star light and said nothing.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>When he next went down, Red Alert wasn’t there. But the door remained unlocked.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Cycles went by. They travelled on.</p><p>His day was marked by little things, fuelling, seeing Rung, helping out with repairs here and there. It was quiet and pointless and much of the time the Max was caught between crushing boredom and high anxiety at the lack of anything. He was a war frame without a war and, just like all the other frontline mechs, turning himself inside out trying not to blow a hole in the next mech who performed a systems reset too loudly .</p><p>When he next went down to the oil reserve, he was taken aback when his HUD lit up with Red's tag. He was sat in the same spot Max had claimed for himself, optics dark, systems ticking over low.</p><p>Max stopped just inside the door and dithered, not wanting to disturb the other mech, who'd clearly come down for the same reason Max had, but somewhat irked that his hideout was occupied.</p><p>He smiled at himself. <em>Stupid.</em></p><p>He sent a polite general status enquiry ping and the red and white mech booted online so hard Max swore he could hear Red's processor grinding. His optics flared white and he launched himself to his pedes, vents sucking air noisily.</p><p>Yeah. Max cursed himself. <em>Stupid again</em>.</p><p>‘Sorry Red, didn’t mean to startle you.'</p><p>Red Alert didn't speak but half staggered for the door, slammed the key pad to open it, and was gone before Max could stop him.</p><p>Max sighed.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>He stood before the blast doors next night cycle and hesitated with his hand above the key pad. He lowered it and instead sent another general enquiry ping to Reds comm frequency.</p><p>He waited.</p><p>A few moments later, the ping was echoed back with a location and Max smiled.</p><p>He keyed open the door and moved slowly, quietly to sit next to Red at the edge of the oil reserve.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Time passed, marked by increasingly ludicrous mishaps, that Max managed for the most part to steer well clear of.</p><p>He and Red met more often than not down in the darkness and sat, more often than not, in silence, a polite distance apart from each other, fields calm but wrapped tight against plating. Sometimes Red would bring things to occupy his hands, puzzles, data pads (though he didn’t really read them), objects that allowed him to twitch in a way that wouldn’t worry other mechs.</p><p>This time, he was dismantling and reassembling the data pad he’d bought as Max sat and watched and talked to the other mech.</p><p>They had meandered through war experiences, because really, what else was there. Max pulled up all the files he'd been loaded with before his onlining, asked Red about the battles and skirmishes Max had identified the other mech had been present at. Once he'd warmed up, Red turned out to be a quietly animated companion; his observations of the mechs making up the Command Team, whilst overlaid with inconsequential, frustrating levels of detail and often glaring paranoia, were wry, intimate portrayals that reflected a mech that had at one time called Optimus and the others friends.</p><p>When Red had eventually turned the inquiry onto Max, he’d started with the one question Max couldn't answer. Max huffed as he considered the question.</p><p>‘They built me on Kimia, thawed me out and dropped me. I had about 20 solar cycles before I went into Simanzi.’ He shrugged. ‘They loaded me with history texts, but that’s kinda it for my ‘pre war' experience.’</p><p>Red continued with the deconstruction of the data pad, laying out each piece at a time, not looking at him.</p><p>‘Did you really kill 10,000 Decepticons at Simanzi?’</p><p>Max glanced up at the star field framed by the windows in the bulkhead, out, beyond, into the universe, where someone, somewhere, wouldn’t know of all the energon on his hands.</p><p>
  <em>Your orders, Max.</em>
</p><p>Frelling Optimus Prime was a coward of the first degree. At least Megatron had stood up in the dock and stared the world down unflinching as they’d counted out his hand in the destruction of their race. Their Prime had fled and left them to the tender mercies of Starscream, as if the last 4 million years were for nothing. Max hung his head between his knees and vented. When he'd tamped down his frustration he looked up. Red had started to reassemble the data pad.</p><p>‘What did you do Red? Before the war?’</p><p>Red Alert’s optics flickered, just a little. Just enough.</p><p>
  <em>Tread carefully, Max.</em>
</p><p>‘Before the war, I was a Guardian. Up at Vespertine Blue, just outside of Iacon. I was in charge of keeping the hot spot secure.’</p><p>Max watched as he fumbled a little with putting the tiniest parts back together, heard the edges of his plating rattle minutely, just a shiver that ran across the surface of his armour. Max felt something hard and fierce clamp round his spark as he watched his friend and saw him for what felt like the first time.</p><p>‘You looked after the new sparks.’</p><p>Red looked at him then and held his gaze for the first time.</p><p>‘Yes.’</p><p>‘And then the war came...’</p><p>Red shook his head. ‘No. The war wasn’t what ended it.’</p><p>No. Not the war. They’d sucked the life out of their planet long before the war.</p><p>‘The hot spots cooled before the war. Cold construction was into its second generation by the time Megatron crawled out of the mines.’</p><p>‘And you spent 4 million years watching all the sparks you saw harvested, all the sparks you kept safe, murdered.’</p><p>Red set the newly put together data pad down. He straightened it a little. Max had watched Ultra Magnus perform a similar ritual when they’d spoken last. As if order could be achieved anywhere on this Primus forsaken ship. As if laying things straight would straighten things out, into black and white. Good and Bad.</p><p>‘Did you know Swerve was a metallurgist, before the war? He used to help with the Harvest up at Port Residura.’</p><p>Max shuttered his optics. He really didn't like Swerve. He couldn’t stand his inane chatter, his false smile. He didn’t want his Energex with sparkles or a curly straw or a fragging 20 minute one-sided monologue about how he and Blurr were going to open a bar when they got home, as if they had a home to go back to and not a waste land.</p><p>Red and Swerve. Red keeping the new sparks safe. Swerve taking them out of the ground and shaping them into who they’d be.</p><p>And him, killing 10, 000 of them in one cycle.</p><p>‘Max?’</p><p>‘What will you do Red, when we get back?’</p><p>If we get back.</p><p>There’s no hesitation as Red speaks and Max feels a strange twinge of something like pain at the words that sound so much like they’ve been learnt by rote.</p><p>‘Ratchet tells me the issue is with my core programming. There’s a conflict in my coding that needs to be written out. It’s enough of an issue to warrant a complete wipe. He said he’d leave my personality and memory components intact. He said I have a processor skip too. And info creep. But we all have that now. 4 million years is a long time for data to not be corrupted. There’s not much I can be or do until I agree to sort all that. I’ll just continue to get stuck in the same glitched loop.’</p><p>He looks a Max, a steady, sure look. Almost a smile. Max isn’t sure what to make of it, but feels a smile quirk up the corner of his mouth too. Because here they are, two broken glitches.</p><p>‘Did you know Prowl had a discrepancy between his main processor and his tactical module that caused him to fritz? He’d just sit there, optics flickering, completely frozen. Happened a fair bit too. Fragging Second in command.’</p><p>Red picked up the data pad and flung it in high arc into the oil. The pearlescent surface parted and swallowed it whole and after a moment, settled as if never disturbed.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Max watched as Rung glued a tiny replica fuel quill on the little model of the Lost Light he was working on. He turned it on the desk, picked it up, set it down again, satisfied, before picking up another quill.</p><p>‘What ship will you make next?’</p><p>Rung looked up, mild surprise written in his expression, as if, for a moment, he’d forgotten Max was there, that he was in the middle of a session. He put down the quill and reached over to pick up his glasses and set them on this face as if doing so would somehow place him back in his role as a psychiatrist.</p><p>‘I’m not sure. I don’t have any plans for after our voyage with the Lost Light.’</p><p>Max cast his optics to the shelves of other models lining the walls, covering all the available surfaces of his office.</p><p>‘s’ lot of ships.’</p><p>Rung smiled. Max huffed, gaze turned back to the miniature Lost Light settled on the desk.</p><p>‘This is the first ship I’ve been on where I’ve been a member of the crew, not just a passenger.’</p><p>He reached out and gently nudged the small ship with one finger, turning it so Rung could place the next fuel quill easily.</p><p>‘Not sure what I’m really doing here, but it’s nice to feel part of something.’</p><p>Rung stilled as Max withdrew his hand and sat, just the quiet tick and hum of his larger systems disturbing the peace. Max felt the edge of Rung’s field flare in praise and warmth. He looked back at the ships lining the walls and a small half smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He doubted pretty much anyone on the ship believed in the Knights of Cybertron, save maybe Drift. They were all just mechs like him trying to find a way to fill the time now they weren’t killing each other. He didn’t think any of them knew where they’d end up. And that had kind of become beside the point. Just like all the other broken down, junked out mechs on the ship, he was a member of the crew. He was part of something. He belonged.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>‘There’s a monster in the basement.’</p><p>Red’s field flickered out, a slick of fear that washed over Max as he settled next to him at the edge of the oil lake. His armour was clamped shut but sparks of static still leapt every now and then across his seams, setting his biolights flickering. Max felt his own plating flare in response and consciously ramped it down, discarding each line of red that flickered to life on his HUD. He waited, like Rung waited with him, when he couldn’t come out of his head and remember that Overlord was dead.</p><p>‘There’s a monster, in the basement...’</p><p>‘Nothing wrong with my hearing Red, just having trouble with what you said.’</p><p>Max watched the mech sitting next to him, looked hard, but Red’s gaze tracked everywhere in the room, the star field above them, the door behind them, the dark lake in front of them, calculating where the threat would come from. He vented deep and wondered cruelly how Rung put up with them all.</p><p>‘You mean like the spark eater?’</p><p>Red shook his head emphatically. ‘So much worse. So much worse, so much worse, so much worse.’</p><p>His plating fluttered, rising and falling in incoherent patterns. His next vocalisation was almost a hiss.</p><p>‘I can hear it.’</p><p>There was no way Red could have missed the alarm that flickered across Max’s face.</p><p>‘What do you mean Red?’</p><p>‘I don’t know what he’s saying, it’s all jumbled, but it’s words, over and over and over and over.’</p><p>‘Who’s saying?'</p><p>Red turned and shoved him, hard, and it was all Max could do to not shoot him on the spot, so highly wound were his battle protocols .</p><p>‘Stop it! Stop being like Rung! I’m not glitched! This is not part of the glitch! I can hear him, over and over and over and over! I don’t understand how no one else can!’</p><p>‘Who? Who can you hear?’</p><p>‘I don’t know!’</p><p>‘Primus Red, have you told Rodimus?’</p><p>He shook his head so hard his armour rattled. ‘Him and his fragging Decepticon guard dog, no, no, no, he’s part of it, somehow, they all are, how can you not hear the words, it’s just, over and over and over and no one’s listening, no one’s listening, NO ONE EVER LISTENS!!’</p><p>He turned suddenly and grabbed the plating on Max’s chest along the seam above his spark. Max flinched back, dragging Red across the decking, then cuffing the smaller mech, desperate to be free of his hold but still enough in his head to remember not to hurt him.</p><p>‘Sweet Solus, Red, back off!’</p><p>The red and white mech landed hard but was scrambling to stand in an instant, weapons onlining, fans roaring, optics nearly white with panic.</p><p>‘No one ever listens.’</p><p>He stumbled out of the blast door before Max could reply.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>He'd encountered Red coming out of Rungs 2 days later when he was down in the bowels of the ship for his own appointment. It was as if the other mech hadn’t seen him. He just folded into his alt and took off the opposite way.</p><p>The session with Rung had been stilted and full of silences. It was obvious to Rung that something had changed but he'd sat and waited for Max to voice it, which he hadn't, not directly. He'd talked a little about Ultra Magnus and Hells Point, an interesting deflection and Rung had watched as he removed the canon habitually holstered on his hip whilst he'd talked, the one that was nearly as big as the diminutive psychiatrist, and completed a brief maintenance cycle, performing a full systems check to ensure his weapons systems were operational.</p><p>‘Are you expecting trouble Max?’</p><p>The big mech didn’t immediately respond, optics still dimmed as the systems check finished. Rung waited. Max’s appointment was due to finish within the next few minutes but Rung had Whirl scheduled for late that cycle and had, as always, cleared his books until then to prepare for the difficulty of that appointment.</p><p>‘Huh?’</p><p>Rung watched as Max reengaged and played back what had just been said.</p><p>‘No? No.’</p><p>His gaze slid around the room and Rung could hear the minute click and whir of weapon systems responding to targeting telemetry.</p><p>‘You’re safe here Max. It’s just us.’</p><p>‘What’s below this deck?’</p><p>Rung frowned a little at the question he knew Max would have just that second earlier answered himself.</p><p>‘You tell me Max.’</p><p>‘Rewind’s out on the hull again doing rivet duty. Love to know what the little guy does to torq Ultra Mags so much.’</p><p>He huffed a forced laugh.</p><p>‘Max?’</p><p>‘Are we done doc?’</p><p>He stood, a cacophony of hydraulics that would have Ratchet muttering archly, tips of the long blocky finials that framed the side of his head barely clearing the ceiling. He stepped in to Rung’s field, plating lifting minutely, his own field tamped right down. Rung stayed sat down. Something had clearly agitated Max and as much as Rung had hoped they were past the treat of violence in their weekly sessions, there was a strong unspoken threat to his patient’s posture.</p><p>‘It’s ok Max. I’ll see you next week.’</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Max didn’t show up for his next session. Rung opened his comm, but existing, overlapping comm traffic from the Command staff told him all he needed to know about why.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p> Rung had trusted that Max wouldn’t hurt him, even as he held the same canon in his face that he had dismantled and cleaned in his session but cycles ago.</p><p>Rung had trusted as Whirl had goaded Max, the ex Wrecker’s own self loathing and wish for death spurring him to prod at Max’s vulnerabilities in a way that revealed much about Whirl’s own precise and devastating introspection.</p><p>And he had trusted even as Max had been overwhelmed with the recordings of Overlord and the atrocities he’d committed, that Rewind had so callously, carelessly projected. Rung had gone to him as he’d knelt and tried in vain to comfort him, so utterly broken as he was.</p><p>Rung trusted Fortress Maximus.</p><p>Rodimus though, was something Rung hadn’t accounted for.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>‘You hear what Brainstorm made for Swerve?’</p><p>Blaster’s voice carried along the low lit corridor of the brig. Max heard Jackpot chuckle wryly.</p><p>‘Nah, what now?’</p><p>He heard Blaster laugh. ‘Special gun, lights up an’ everything. Tells you when you’ve hit your target.’</p><p>Jackpot spluttered. ‘Primus, that mech has no sense of propriety.’</p><p>Footsteps echoed as one of them walked down to give him his evening energon. Blaster gave him a half smile and passed the energon cube through the holding field.</p><p>‘Everything ok Max?’</p><p>Max didn’t move from his spot in the corner. ‘Yup.’</p><p>‘Ok, yell if you need me, I’m on this shift.’</p><p>Max didn’t reply. Blaster paced slowly back to Jackpot. Max sat and counted the rivets in the ceiling again before retrieving his energon. Jackpot’s voice was loud and grating as he cupped the cube and sipped.</p><p>‘You hear what Hoist pulled out of the reservoir last cycle?’</p><p>Max sipped and half listened to them as they talked. At Jackpot’s reply, he placed the cube carefully to one side, leaned forward, and purged his tank.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>He’d received special dispensation from Rodimus and Ratchet had come and collected him from the brig and accompanied him to the morgue.</p><p>Red’s plating was still bright and vibrant when Ratchet had pulled him out of storage. He was still warm when Max reached out a trembling hand and placed it on Red’s chest.</p><p>In the 3 years max had been kept prisoner on G9, he’d wished for death time and again. The physical pain of existing was exhausting. The need to escape from the horrors he was being made to inflict on his peers, overwhelming.</p><p>The pain was extreme and horrific.</p><p>The pain of seeing Red Alert deactivated might have been pedestrian in comparison.</p><p>Knowing Red made it through the entire war and had then taken his own life, had actively wanted to die, because no one, no one, would ever listened to him, was perhaps the worst pain of Max’s life.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>They kept him in the brig. Rodimus kept him in the brig. The distinction was important. He’d stopped fuelling cycles ago. Ratchet had been and gone, all bluster about energon drips if he kept refusing to take his fuel orally.</p><p>And then, one late cycle, he opened his eyes and Rung was there. Whole and hale.</p><p>Rung had smiled, carefully, sadly. He’d stood in silence for a bit, the huff and gentle exhalation of his vents and the louder, stuttering vents of Max’s the only sound beyond the background thrum of the ship. Then he lowered the containment field and came and sat next to Max.</p><p>Max spoke first in the end, with words that felt like the most important of his life.</p><p>‘I prepared a speech for you, to say to you. To try to explain it all, but now I know all I want to say is I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. Waking up from the coma, talking about what happened on Garrus 9, with Overlord, taking you hostage... I was overwhelmed. I hope you can forgive me.’</p><p>Rung reached across and placed his hand over Max’s.</p><p>‘It’s ok Max. I’ve been around for a while now. I’ve learned to forgive anything.’</p><p>Rung’s field enveloped him, gentle, peaceful, somehow filling the room, even though he was such a diminutive mech. Max closed his eyes, overwhelmed once again, this time with relief.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Rung’s hand lifted as the ship’s klaxon burst to life. The brig was flooded with red light as the alarm sounded and the containment field flickered and then became a solid wall once more. Max remembered Red’s words and took his time to tell Rung about the monster in the basement while they waited for information.</p><p>Rung remembered the brilliant flash of pain as his helm had been shattered by blaster fire. Red Alert had been right. There were monsters on the ship and monsters puppeting their lives from afar. In hindsight, Rung knew Overlord was just the tip of the iceberg.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The deck plating shivered under them as he comforted Max, percussion waves from multiple high energy range weapons being deployed at once flexing the very fabric of the ship. Rung could taste the static charge in the air, from weaponry, from blown out sparks; his own field roiled under the assault of hundreds of mechs flaring in panic, in pain.</p><p>He'd begged Max to mute comms. There was no coherence now to Rodimus’ panicked shouts, or the overlapping screams of others dying above them. Max shivered beneath his touch, optics dark, plating rattling. Rung understood why he kept the comms open. Down in the belly of the ship, in the dark of the brig, there was no way out. It was just a matter of time. Rung had no overrides to deactivate the emergency lockdown on the energy fields containing them, but he had no doubt that it wouldn’t prevent Overlord from getting in.</p><p>Max was lost to him, deep deep down in the trauma and horror of G9, possibly unaware of the actual, imminent danger they were both in. Rung comforted him the best he could and tried to prepare himself. He’d lived a long time. He was not a soldier, and there was no doubt that he would die quickly at Overlord’s hands. But he would be proud to meet his end in defence of a patient. Of a friend.</p><p>The frantic calls for help reached a cacophony; Ultra Magness is down, is dying. And then out of the distraught cries, Rodimus’ voice, calling for them, calling for Max. The energy field confining them flickers and then drops. Rodimus continues to cry for help as Max finally boots his optics. Rung flinches as he shifts.</p><p>‘Max, no, you don’t...’</p><p>He tried to still him. Rodimus is wrong. So very wrong to ask this of him. But Rung knows the little Prime has his own ghosts, those he condemned to death in Nyon, and the slick of energon staining the plates of his own ship, even before Overlord. Max staggers a little as he stands, but is then moving and Rung isn’t able to keep up.</p><p>‘Max!’</p><p>‘My whole life is slag. What’s the point? Might as well finish it with the others.’</p><p>His heavy footfalls echo in the darkness as he leaves Rung behind. He’s gone before Rung can reply.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>After they’d mourned their dead and thrown Drift off the ship in a hail of vitriol that Max found condemning in its viciousness, they carried on.</p><p>Max stayed in his hab suit when he wasn’t on shift. He avoided Rodimus. The mech’s field rang with enough dissonance to set Max on edge even at a respectable distance. The air around him tasted bitter, like the copper shavings they used to put in energon. Their Captain moved like a wounded animal and it didn’t take a genius to tell the responsibility for the slaughter by Overlord didn’t squarely rest on the exiled ex ‘Con’s shoulders.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Late one night cycle, they bought Red Alert back online. Ratchet comm’d Max, to say that Rodimus had decided they should. So they had. 
Max could hear the spark deep weariness in Ratchet’s tone that spoke of how he felt about that. Rodimus had gone, back to whatever Captainly things he pretended to do and Ratchet had wanted to know if Max wanted to come down. 

To see his friend. 

Max had offlined his optics as a surge of utter despair had overwhelmed him. Ratchet listened to the silence on the other end of the line stretch and eventually turned off the comm quietly.</p><p>In the low lights of the offshift, Max took a seat at Red’s bedside. Red was curled on his side, facing the wall. The monitors showed he was online, the whisper of disturbed air across Max’s plating from lowly circulating dorsal ventilations confirming it.

He didn’t speak. 

Max sat in silence with his friend and wondered how long they’d keep paying for the hubris and vanity of mechs on the other side of the galaxy. And when they’d be allowed to finally be at peace.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Time passed.</p><p>Red spoke to no one for many, many cycles.</p><p>Max burned with how much he hated.</p><p>The sessions with Rung became futile and in the end Rung agreed to just let him be, let him talk if he wanted. Mostly, they worked together in silence on a model of their home world from before the war, Cyberton a darkly beautiful sphere, alone save for it’s one remaining moon.</p><p>One late cycle, Max returned to the oil reserve and found Red, sitting where they always had. Max didn’t speak as he moved slowly to sit down next to him, but reached out his field, fearful, questioning. Red’s flickered and withdrew.</p><p>Slowly, as the hours passed and the starlight deepened, Max felt Red’s field loosen, until they were fully overlapping, frequencies resonating in a slow harmony. Max felt something loosen inside himself for the first time since he’d left Garrus 9. He offlined his optics and let the slow pulse of their living energy wash over him and felt a deep sense of peace.</p><p>They didn’t return to the oil reserve. But Max’s hab suit was larger than average to accommodate him, so he shifted what little he had around to make space for an additional chair, a side table for their fuel.</p><p>They built a routine together.</p><p>Rung started to see them both at the same time and more often that not Max and Rung would gossip about the nonsense going on around them, Red sitting quietly, content to just listen.</p><p>When Magnus had comm’d Max and asked to speak to him, Max hadn’t been sure what to expect. It had been Minimus Ambus who’d taken the meeting, the Magnus armour… elsewhere. Max wondered at that, at the significance of the tiny mech in front of him, choosing to divest his armour for a meeting to discuss divesting his role as Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord.</p><p>Max said yes. Immediately. Red had hesitated when Max had come back with a plan along with their evening fuel. But it was their chance to get out. To leave the Lost Light, the quest, everything, behind.</p><p>So they did.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Luna 1 was empty, save for a few persistent Decepticons. Max dealt with them efficiently. Word got out that he had some sort of vested interest in the moon and they had no more trouble after that.</p><p>Red set up their hab station in sight of the hot spot. Max would sometimes catch Red out on the moon’s surface, walking among the dormant new sparks under the blistering cold brilliance of the moon’s neighbouring star systems. Red would speak to them, in a quiet voice, words that Max couldn’t catch, and the new sparks couldn't hear. But his field would be loose, and warm, and he’d gently lathe the potential new lives before him in comfort, radiating safe, safe, safe.</p><p>Red still struggled, with memory purges, with the oversensitivity of his sensory suit. So did Max, in so many ways. But their simple life, in the defence of others, resolved many of Red’s programming conflicts and he glitched only infrequently now.</p><p>They adopted a quiet routine when Max wasn’t away on enforcer business, fuelling together as the day cycle started in the little refectory the base had, going over reports, putting together objectives for coming missions as required. Sometimes Max would be gone for weeks and Red would tend to the hot spot between taking Max’s calls. Sometimes calls would be clipped, all business. Sometimes Red would sit and refuel just as the night cycle began, content to listen in silence to Max’s voice as he talked about his day.</p><p>Sometimes, when Max came back, Red would sit with him in the half light of their berth room and talk till the day cycle came around again, gently polishing the large scarred plates of Max’s back.</p><p>Then they’d sleep. Deep. Dreamless.</p><p>It was enough.</p><p>When finally they reunited with the Lost Light and all the others, Max found he couldn’t hate Rodimus.</p><p>They did their thing, they saved the day.</p><p>Rung was gone by the time Max had a thought in his head to thank him, for everything, and then the thoughts and the name of the mech they concerned had slipped away and Max had wondered at that and then gone on with his life.</p><p>The hot spot had blazed to life. They called it the Bronze Harvest.</p><p>And Red became Guardian to a new generation of Primus’ children.</p><p> </p><p>*</p>
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